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Add another gastropub to your list of inner-city boozers worth a
visit for the food.

After months of renovations, which coincided with the
refurbishment and relaunch of the adjoining former Meat Market
Craft Centre in North Melbourne, Hotel Metropolitan enters the
fray.

The pub was built in 1874 at the same time as the Meat Market.
Proprietor and chef Craig McVean is one of the many who has passed
through the kitchens of Jacques Reymond over the years and spent
five years working for Greg Brown in his bakery business, launching
the Browns Bouchon restaurant concept in Toorak as its head
chef.

These days, the simplicity of pubs appeals to McVean. The food
is classic, carnivorous, gastropub stuff: corned beef on Irish
champ with green beans and whole grain mustard sauce, for example;
or oxtail and beef cheek with portobello mushrooms, kipfler
potatoes and root vegetables in a red wine braise.

And prices are excellent. For now, anyway.

Moving on at Verge

At least 12 months' uncertainty at Spring Street's Verge came to
an end last week with a partnership buy-out.

As mooted here earlier, original partners Simon Denton and Karen
White have officially acquired third partner Michelle Bowen's share
of the business, Denton told us last week, after a damaging period
of toing-and-froing on how the restaurant and its personnel would
solve a partnership split.

Documents were signed last week: we can all move on now, Denton
said.

Asian theme to a tea

Capitalising on the international buzz surrounding Shanghai,
David Zhou, the man behind Prahran's David's restaurant and the AY
Tea shops, is working on Melbourne's first Shanghai tea house.

He's taken over the former Rourke's Hotel, in Chapel Street,
South Yarra, and construction is under way to create a tea-focused
yum cha experience.

Designer Wayne Finschi's concept (he has worked on several
Asian-themed restaurant designs) makes reference to the English
colonisation period in Shanghai, which fits with existing
architectural features of the building.

"I didn't really set out to have restaurants," says the tea
importer and retailer.

"Now I'll have two."

Zhou hopes to have AY Oriental Tea House open by Christmas.

Master and apprentice

West coasters will breathe a sigh of relief to learn that Kosta
Talihmanidis should be back in action by the end of the month,
perhaps even sooner.

The restaurateur who with his wife Pam ran the eponymous Kosta's
in Lorne for 27 years is putting the finishing touches on his new
Airey's Inlet seaside bistro A La Grecque as you read this.

The energetic Talihmanidis sold Kosta's 16 months ago but found
himself restless for the restaurant life.

Renovations to the former Airey's Foodhaven, which he bought
earlier this year, include a substantial deck.

A La Grecque will run all day, seven days, over summer. Joining
the Talihmanidis team as a partner is son Alex, 23, who has been
working in hotels and restaurants since Kosta's was sold.

He will also begin an apprenticeship as a chef under his mother,
making him possibly the state's only first-year
apprentice/co-proprietor!

Star ascending

There's a new Next Big Thing in British restaurant circles and he
won't thrill detractors of so-called molecular gastronomy.

Anthony Flinn, the 24-year-old chef-proprietor of his own
restaurant - Anthony's - in Leeds, has won a significant British
award: the 2005 Remy Martin Excellence Award for Newcomers, part of
the hoo-ha that accompanies the annual launch of the influential
Harden's Restaurant Guides.

Flinn did two season-long stages at El Bulli before launching
his own brand of Adria/Blumenthal-inspired avant-garde food.

Among the dishes at Anthony's are roast duck with olive-oil
chocolate bonbons and onion risotto with parmesan and espresso.

Richard Harden, coeditor of the Harden's Guides, whose readers
choose the awards winner, told The Independent: "Anthony Flinn is
making bigger waves earlier in his career than any major chef in
recent memory.

It's obviously early days, but it's difficult to disagree with
one of our survey reporters who claimed Anthony is 'the next star
in the British cooking firmament'."

The latest edition of Uncorked magazine, in The
Age on Tuesday, presents a buying guide to Australian wines
worth cellaring, by Ralph Kyte-Powell.